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What, precisely, is the purpose of the U.S. Congress? During another presidency of Donald Trump, it is difficult to tell. The authority to declare war, traditionally viewed as a crucial legislative power, has become a unclear prerogative of the executive branch in the years since the 9/11 attacks; the president, in recent months, has claimed additional of that control for his administration, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.

The authority over spending appears to be mostly been taken away from the legislative branch as well; currently, under the office of budget chief, Russell Vought, much of the ability to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the administration claiming the ability to cancel legislatively approved spending and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re enacting any laws, either; almost all bills must currently be packed into budget reconciliation bills, massive recurring must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the senate obstruction. But when these don’t pass – and increasingly, they do not – the government simply ceases operations. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many citizens notice. At present, the government has been shut down for the entire month; there are little indication of it resuming operations anytime soon. But the presidency continues humming along.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear rather irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a institution that has largely abolished itself?

In what way ‘oppose the president’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Prop 50 prevail

And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could provide five more congressional positions to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election in the coming weeks, has captured the political imagination of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed reaction to trends occurring in other states: GOP-led states have for a long time embraced extreme partisan gerrymandering while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via impartial independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split House control and a long-term sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state measure is clearly intended as a countermove to a mid-term redrawing of maps that recently passed in Texas, which installed boundaries that will provide the GOP an additional five seats in the state congressional delegation next year; comparable redistricting moves are in progress in states such as Missouri and the Hoosier State. (The left in the Old Dominion are likewise emulating California’s lead in seeking to alter districts.)

The California measure seems likely to pass, as progressive electorate respond with concern and frustration to Trump’s autocratic consolidation of power and look for methods to restrain his most extreme impulses. But the proposition is not without controversy. Some opponents caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ attempts to change districts triggering a revenge cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to design their maps so as to eliminate any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the proposal on more purely principled pro-democracy bases: a electoral area that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is not in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of dissenting views is suppressed, and that the process of debate, discussion and persuasion that is supposed to define a functioning democratic process will be limited only to party primaries, if it occurs at all.

It is worth considering each of these criticisms on their merits. The first critique, that Prop 50 will provoke the right to redraw their respective districts in response, fails as a causal argument: it is illogical to claim that Republicans will be compelled to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those actions. The GOP, it can be noted, has required no any motivation of retaliation to redraw boundaries that guarantee long-term positions for their party: they have been ready to do this for its own sake, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The other objection, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the GOP’s anti-democracy shift, but a sort of melancholic desire for a different nation than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a more ideal situation – in the world that the majority of the left, I think, yearn for and hope for – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our circumstances. It is undesirable to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for politicians to choose their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered uncontested. That these measures have grown essential in order to slow the autocratic advance of Trump’s control and lessen the level of suffering he is able to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are required. It is only once the fight against Trumpism has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch fails to in reality have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, precisely, that the proposition’s additional five Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that the House and Senate still holds is the authority to compel testimony, and the ability to examine. Even in our era of stagnant politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and the state’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will become a part of a institution with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their investigations into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and crucially, it’s not something that any Republican would do.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US writer